Day: August 5, 2017

First, I made him lose all of the skin on his cannons with my over-liberal application of Equiderma lotion. Then I forced him to do so much walking it’s absurd. Walking is the worst.

On Monday, when I went to wrap up Murray’s cruddy/scabby right hind, he said “no thank you”. He kept picking the leg up and scampering away from me when I went to wrap it, so I asked my barn manager to give me a hand. She has a special relationship with Murray — i.e. he behaves for her, because he knows he has to. He wouldn’t even let her touch his leg, so she had a conversation with him, and then wrapped his leg while he was standing ground tied in the barn aisle.

On Tuesday, I figured I’d skip the wrapping drama and twitch Murray before I attempted to clean out the goop on his leg. I asked barn manager for help with a handy-twitch. When barn manager went to put on the twitch, Murray said “no thank you”. Then they had a discussion about accepting a twitch and not being a butt when someone touches your face. She got him twitched, and I wrapped his leg in the parking lot (where he had ended up over the course of the discussion).

On Wednesday, I wrapped his leg in his stall and it was relatively drama free. I think I had to use some stern words to remind him to keep his manners about him, but other than that, no big.

On Thursday, as I was booting up to ride (I’m riding in diagonal-opposite boots on the good legs right now), Murray LEAPT away from me and right into our barn manager. And not just a little bit, he leapt into her and kept on going through her as if she didn’t even exist. Then they had a discussion about respecting peoples’ space.

On Friday, Murray let me do his girth up to the third hole on each side (one higher than usual), while he was tied, and he didn’t move a muscle, except to remind me to please put one more carrot in the machine. [I was actually floored by this, and NOBODY who knows us was around to appreciate it. DEVASTATING. He got a huge pile of carrots as a reward though.]